GURUGRAM:
Extortion racket seems to go unchecked in Bhondsi
jail despite tall claims by the
prison authorities which in December 2017 had transferred several inmates out of the jail and reshuffled the staff to curtail the menace. Now again, the jail staff have come under the scanner of the authorities after a woman from Wazirpur village approached the
police, alleging that a few prison staffers, including a deputy superintendent, are harassing her son — a jail inmate — in an attempt to extract money from him.
Rajbala, mother of Dharmbeer who is serving sentence in a murder case, alleged that her son had been undergoing trauma owing to harassment meted out to him by the prison staff. “He seemed to be stressed every time I visited him in the jail. When I asked him the reason, he told me about his ordeal. The jail staff have been asking him for Rs 1 lakh and thrashing him every day to pressure him. They also threatened to frame him in a case on charge of carrying a
mobile phone on the prison premises. He is being tortured mentally and physically,” Rajbala alleged in her complaint filed in
Bhondsi police station. The police, however, are yet to register an FIR, and claimed that the investigation was under way.
TOI tried to contact jail superintendent Jai Kishan Chillar several times but the attempts did not elicit any response.
When contacted, inspector Umesh Kumar, SHO of Bhondsi police station, said, “The allegations are very serious in nature, and we are verifying the facts to find out if the jail staff have any role in it. The investigation is going on and an action will be taken as per the law after we examine the allegations thoroughly.”
This is not the first time that a complaint of extortion has come to the fore in Bhondsi jail, which houses several gangsters from across Delhi and NCR.
In August 2017, Manish Bhardwaj — the alleged kingpin of the fake arms licence scam — had filed a police complaint against jailed gangsters and officials of Bhondsi jail, accusing them of running an extortion racket from behind the bars. Police had then registered a case against 10 people and taken gangster Manjeet Mahal on production remand for interrogation.
This was soon followed by a series of complaints, and the Haryana Police went ahead taking a special initiative to tackle the extortion racket being run from the jail. The government had then taken a strong action against the erring officials to curb rampant lawlessness on the jail premises and seized mobile phones and SIM cards from several inmates and officials. Also, four prison officials, including the then jail superintendent, were transferred in December last year.
Later, in a major reshuffle, the government had transferred 18 jail officials and nine jail superintendents and nine deputy superintendents across the state.
